doll. I wonder who she expects is going to marry her, if she brings her up with such extravagant notions."
"Mr. Gordonmammon thinks a deal of the Widow Lawton," said the hostess of the quilting-party.
"Yes, I know he does," replied Sukey. "If he was a widower, I guess they'd be the town's talk. Some folks think he goes there full often enough. He brought his Tom there to-day to marry Chloe. I wonder the Widow could spare her time to be married,—though, to be sure, it didn't take long, for the minister made a mighty short prayer."
Poor Chloe! Thus they dismissed a subject which gave her a life-long heart-ache. There was no honey in her bridal moon. She told Tom several times she wished he would stay at home; but he was so perseveringly good-natured, there was no possibility of quarrelling with him. By degrees, she began to find his visits on Saturday evening rather more entertaining than talking to herself.
"I wouldn't mind bein' so druv wi' work," said Tom, "ef I could live like white folks do when they gits married. I duz more work than them as has a cabin o' their own, an' keeps a cow and a pig. But black folks don't seem to git no good o' their work."
"Massa Minister says it's 'cause God cussed Ham," replied Chloe. "I thought 'twas wicked to cuss, but Massa Minister says Ham was cussed in the Bible. Ef I could have some o' the fish I clean and dry, I could sen' to Lunnun for a gownd; but Missy Katy she gits all the gownds, 'cause Ham was cussed in the Bible. I don't know nothin' 'bout it; seems drefful queer."
"Massa tole me I mus' work for nothin', 'cause Ham was cussed," rejoined Tom. "But it seems like Ham cussed some black folks worse nor others. There's Jim Saunders, he's a nigger, too; but he gits his feed and six dollars a month."
The words were like a stab to Chloe. She dropped half a needleful of stitches in her knitting, and told Tom she wished he'd hold his tongue, for he kept up such a jabbering that he made all her stitches run down. Tom, thus silenced, soon fell asleep. She glanced at him as he sat snoring by her side, and contrasted him with the genteel figure and handsome features that had been so indelibly photographed on her memory by the sunbeams of love. Tears dropped fast on her knitting-work; but when Tom woke up, she spoke kindly, and tried to atone for her ill-temper. Time, which gradually reconciles us to all things, produced the same effect on her as on others. When the minister asked her, six months afterward, how she and Tom were getting along, she replied, "I's got used to him."
Yet life seemed more dreary to her than it did before she had that brief experience of a free feeling. She never thought of that look without longing to know what it was Jim wanted to say. But, as months passed on, the tantalizing vision came less frequently, and at the end of a year Chloe experienced the second happy emotion of her life. When she looked upon her babe, a great fountain of love leaped up in her heart. She was never too tired to wait upon little Tommy; and if his cries disturbed her deep sleep, she folded the helpless little creature to her bosom, with the feeling that he was better than rest. She was accustomed to carry him to the fish-flake in a big basket, and lay him on a bed of dry leaves, with her apron for an awning. As she paced backwards and forwards at her daily toil, it was a perpetual entertainment to see him lying there sucking his thumbs. But that was nothing compared with the joy of nursing him. When his hunger was partially satisfied, he would stop to smile in his mother's face; and Chloe had never seen anything so beautiful as that baby smile. As he lay on her lap, laughing and cooing, there was something in the expression of his eyes that reminded her of the look she could never forget. He had taken the picture from her soul, and brought it with him to the outer world; but as he lay there, playing with his
